Laurie Gilmore Books in Order

If you want to start at the beginning: The Pumpkin Spice Café → The Cinnamon Bun Book Store → The Christmas Tree Farm
If you love a bookish scavenger hunt: The Cinnamon Bun Book Store
If you’re in the mood for holiday snowed-in romance: The Christmas Tree Farm → The Gingerbread Bakery
If you want single dad + found-family warmth: The Strawberry Patch Pancake House
If you want a hands-on, cozy companion: The Pumpkin Spice Café Coloring Book

Laurie Gilmore is the pen name of Melissa McTernan, a romance writer who leans into comfort, community, and a little bit of heat. Under the Gilmore name, she writes the Dream Harbor books, a small-town series filled with cozy settings, quirky locals, and romances that don’t pretend sparks aren’t flying.

The pen name is a nod to the kind of small-town TV world she loves, the one with quick banter, familiar faces, and a town that always has an opinion. She’s said that if you’ve ever wished you lived in a place like Stars Hollow, or just wanted certain will-they-won’t-they characters to hurry up and get together, you’ll get the vibe she’s going for. She’s also talked about chasing that sweet spot between “aww” and “oh wow” in the same story.

She also writes romantic fantasy and paranormal romance as Melissa McTernan. Those books pull in her love of grumpy heroes, sarcastic heroines, and grown-up fairy tales, including a werewolf series that starts with A Curse of Blood and Wolves.

Before Dream Harbor took off, she spent years writing and publishing in smaller ways, from novellas to indie projects, learning her craft book by book. She signed with One More Chapter, an imprint of HarperCollins UK, to write her Wolf Brothers series under her real name, and that opened the door to something new. When her publisher asked if she’d be interested in writing a cozy small-town romance series too, she jumped at it.

She writes the kind of romance she wants to read.

The Pumpkin Spice Café kicked off Dream Harbor in 2023, following Jeanie as she starts over after her aunt gifts her a beloved café in the town of Dream Harbor. Jeanie’s fresh-start energy crashes straight into Logan, a local farmer who’d rather avoid gossip and keep to himself. The series quickly found a huge online audience, and The Pumpkin Spice Café went on to win TikTok Shop Book of the Year at the 2024 TikTok Book Awards.

The funny part is that she isn’t on TikTok.

Dream Harbor kept expanding with new couples and new corners of town, each story designed to stand on its own while still letting familiar faces drift through the background. Hazel and Noah chase secret messages in The Cinnamon Bun Book Store. Kira and Bennett get snowed in at a Christmas tree farm in The Christmas Tree Farm. Archer, Iris, and five-year-old Olive bring found-family energy to The Strawberry Patch Pancake House. Later installments lean into wedding-season mayhem in The Gingerbread Bakery and a fake-relationship setup in The Daisy Chain Flower Shop.

Across her books, Gilmore tends to write relationships that feel rooted in everyday pressure: work, money, family baggage, and the scary decision to let other people in. She likes a clear romantic push and pull, the grumpy one and the sunny one, the people who think they’ve got it handled until the town proves them wrong. Even when the stories get steamy, they stay anchored in warmth and humor.

When she’s not writing, she’s usually reading, or doing the very real work of wrangling kids. She lives in upstate New York, in the Albany area, with her husband, children, cats, and a puppy. She’s joked that she writes romance to keep her sanity, and the page has the same energy, warm, human, and ready to make you smile.